Page 10 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Six

A Bird Listening

“Well, come in and close the door so they don’t hear, at least,” Cook snaps.

Minnow closes the pantry door and seals them all in the cramped space.

“What do you mean, none of them have had the procedure?” Birdie asks. “You can’t have abilities without undergoing the procedure.”

Cook looks exhausted. “I don’t have any more answers than you do.

Just be wary. Lake has no idea where she is and is prone to wandering and telling us we’ve all already died.

River claims to be an empath, but she knows things she shouldn’t.

She’s a liar. Don’t listen to her or talk to her.

” Cook scowls, not feigning concern or affection for any of her charges.

“Sky has something with touch. Avoid him, too. Dawn’s feelings force themselves into you like an infection.

You can rotate who has to deal with her room.

I won’t go in there. No one knows what’s wrong with Nimbus.

Just keep your thoughts busy while you work around them. ”

“What about Forest?” Birdie asks, haunted by those blue eyes. But Minnow asks a question on top of that one, interrupting her.

“Where are the others?” she asks.

Cook’s scowl deepens. “What others?”

“The ones that use the bedrooms upstairs. They are bedrooms, aren’t they?”

Birdie holds her breath. Maybe Magpie is still here. Maybe Cook lets the poor children wait to eat. Maybe they get only one meal a day. Maybe, maybe…

Cook’s scowl disappears, smoothed away into a blank expression. “Those rooms are empty now.”

Birdie feels the words like a punch to the gut. She gasps for air, trying to feign an appropriate level of interest and act as though she doesn’t want to walk into the bog and never come back.

“And where,” she says, voice calm despite the storm of despair inside, “do they send the children who have had the procedure and need help, if they don’t send them here anymore?” She clenches her hands into fists behind her back so they won’t betray her by shaking.

Cook shrugs. “They come and go. Less now than they used to, while we care for…these ones.” She squinches her face like she has a bad taste in her mouth.

“ Where do they go?” Birdie presses.

Cook raises her hands in a gesture of futility and annoyance. “Do I look like I’m in charge?”

She doesn’t. But that doesn’t make Birdie any less inclined to strangle her. Cook runs this house; it’s obvious. She has to know everything that’s going on under the roof, including the drugging of the maids. So she must have more information than she’s letting on.

Minnow speaks up, which is probably for the best before Birdie attacks Cook and ruins everything. “We’re maids to the residents here, then?”

“Oh no,” Rabbit says, wringing her hands. “I’ve never worked with ladies before. Or gentlemen. I don’t know how to be someone’s servant, I—”

“You aren’t their servants,” Cook snaps. “You’re here for the house . Not them. You understand? The house.”

Birdie doesn’t understand. The other two must not, either, because Cook rubs her forehead like she has a headache.

“Our duty is always to the house,” she says.

“You’re to tidy up their rooms and keep the bathrooms and communal spaces clean, but otherwise you help me by keeping them out of my hair.

I don’t want to see them except at mealtimes.

I’d leave them shut in their rooms around the clock, but I was overruled.

Make sure you keep the stairs locked, though. Don’t want them wandering.”

“Who overruled you?” Birdie asks. Whoever did that is actually in charge, and that’s who she needs to find.

“What about the woman in the red dress?” Rabbit asks, infuriating Birdie with the interruption. “Whose wife is she?”

“She’s not—” Cook starts, then shakes her head. “She’s the House Wife. She helps the house. Do whatever she asks without question; otherwise leave her alone. Come directly to me with any problems with the residents. Better yet, don’t have any problems.”

With that, Cook bustles past them back into the kitchen.

Rabbit shrugs and follows. Birdie turns and meets Minnow’s eyes for a heartbeat. Minnow is studying her as though trying to figure something out. Birdie doesn’t like it.

She makes her expression go flat, erasing herself from her own face. It’s a trick she learned a long time ago, taught to her by Cricket, a maid in her first house. “Best get back to work,” Birdiesays.

Minnow grabs a basket, seemingly at random, and disappears. Birdie didn’t hear her get assigned to laundry—or anything, for that matter. But Cook is avoiding Birdie’s gaze, so it’s clear they’re more or less on their own.

Birdie needs space. She needs to think. She needs to scream, but that’s not an option.

So she takes a bucket, a bottle of vinegar, some soap, and a handful of rags into the bathroom near the room she wasn’t supposed to knock on.

The tile in here is the same glossy black as the hallways, and she can see every footprint, fingerprint, and water droplet.

Oddly, it’s not as bad as she’d worried it would be, though.

Which means this group hasn’t been living here very long, or the previous maid was excellent at her job.

As she scrubs, she stews. Cook has to be wrong. There’s no way this group didn’t get the procedure. Their families must be lying. But why? Why put their own children through that?

What did River say? It’s not even considered a problem by most of the country. Only by people like my parents.

River seems unusual. Maybe she got the procedure on her own, as a way of rebelling against her station. But Nimbus wouldn’t have done that. And Birdie can’t imagine his serious, distant father or his barely functioning mother choosing this for him.

It’s a mystery. It’s not her mystery, though. It doesn’t matter. All she needs to do is find out what happened to the previous patients. Where did they go after treatment? And was Magpie among them?

She needs to talk to the House Wife. But just as Birdie steps out of the bathroom, she sees a flash of Rabbit’s red hair and a swirl of the House Wife’s red dress disappear into the room she was told not to knock on.

Birdie stomps a foot. It’s childish enough to make her feel foolish, which deflates her mood a bit. If she had just stayed in the kitchen, she would have been taken back to help the House Wife instead of Rabbit. Now she’s stuck in the bathroom.

Birdie leans against the tiled wall and sighs. She has to be smarter than this. She can’t afford to have feelings.

A murmur of voices catches her attention. She leans closer to the wall, pressing her ear against it. The bathroom doesn’t share a wall with the House Wife’s room. It’s River. And…Minnow, again.

What is Minnow thinking?

“Did you ask about taking me for walks?” River asks.

“That makes you sound like a prized dog.”

Birdie would laugh if she wasn’t horrified. How is Minnow so confident, talking to River like that?

“I feel like one sometimes. Though less pampered than I used to be.”

“I’ll ask; I promise,” Minnow says. Then she asks something, too quiet to make out.

River laughs, the sound so bright and loud she could practically be in the bathroom with Birdie.

“You thought I was pregnant, didn’t you?

I saw your eyes go to my stomach when we were talking by the fire.

Did you know in the lower quarters of Sootcity, girls can have babies with whomever they want, and no one cares whether they’re married or how advantageous the match is?

Everyone in the community celebrates every baby and helps take care of each other.

Isn’t that lovely? And if girls want to be with another girl instead, or boys with boys, or anyone wants to be withno one at all, that’s perfectly acceptable. Isn’t it the same in the north?”

Birdie frowns. Why are they having this conversation at all? And why is River asking Minnow about the north?

The answer is once again too quiet to hear. If Minnow is going to waste her time talking to the rich girl, she should at least speak up for Birdie’s sake.

“Mm,” River says. “Anyhow, sorry, you asked me a question. The answer is three years. I was fourteen when it started. But I’ve only been here for three days.

There was a girl here before me, but I never met her.

She finished her treatment the day I got here.

And the House Wife only treats one person at a time, unfortunately. ”

“What are all these desks for?” Minnow asks. Desks? Birdie doesn’t care about desks. She needs Minnow to ask more specific questions about the House Wife and the treatments.

“For tutoring, eventually. My parents assured me my studies would continue, as though they ever cared about that,” River says.

Birdie bites the inside of her cheek. Wouldn’t Dr.Bramble and Hawthorn be annoyed, knowing they went to all that work to get Birdie in here when they could have just gotten Hawthorn hired as the house tutor?

“If you’ve had this…condition for three years, why did your parents send you here now?” Minnow asks. She’s ignoring Cook’s cautions not to speak to River. Birdie’s grateful, but also puzzled as to why Minnow is so curious.

“I received a letter from the Ministry of Health and Progress, informing me that I’d be sent here for treatment.

Dawn got the same. I haven’t gotten Sky to talk to me, Lake makes no sense, and Forest and Nimbus aren’t chatty, so I can’t say for certain if they were also required to come.

Anyhow, it ruined my parents’ plan to marry me off as quickly as possible before anyone realized I was defective.

But I suppose the House Wife will fix me so I’m acceptable again. ”

Their conversation continues, but River must have shifted positions, because Birdie mostly just hears the rise and fall of their voices. Until Minnow asks a sharper question.

“No other children here?”

Birdie presses her ear to the wall so hard it hurts.

“No.”

She slides down the wall and sits on the floor, legs splayed out with no thought for decorum. At least the open door blocks her from view unless someone looks directly inside. She knew Magpie wasn’t here anymore, but every new confirmation hurts.

River’s voice gets louder, too. “No one here but us pampered pets, begging for walks and playtime and attention. Isn’t this place odd, though?

I know what hospitals for the poor look like.

No privacy, no comfort. I imagined the House of Quiet would be the same.

So why did they have such lovely rooms ready for us? What’s upstairs like?”

If Birdie didn’t know better, she would swear River was trying to get information out of Minnow. Neither of them is acting the way they ought to. Birdie will have to be careful around them.

“It’s boring,” Minnow says, walking by, that empty, pointless basket still balanced on her hip. She hasn’t been doing anything at all. Just pretending.

Birdie nearly gets up, but a tall figure appears just outside the room Minnow left. Peeping through the crack between the door hinges and the wall, Birdie can make out the lean lines of Forest.

“Oh, hello, Forest,” River says. “You’re very upsetting. I haven’t figured you out yet. At least you’re not as bad as Sky. He wants to murder us all, did you know that? No, I suppose not. I’ll have to take care of him myself.”

With a swish of her robe, River pads by. Who is this rich girl? What is going on in this house? And how quickly can Birdie get the information she needs so she can leave it all behind and find her sister?